Tuesday, November 25, 2008

What you missed November 2008 Internet Class

The Internet education class scheduled for November 15, 2008 was postponed one week due to the sudden death of Gary Taylor, the EWGS treasurer.

Juanita McBride was the instructor for a class on PERSI and NUCMC. PERSI is short for PERiodical Source Index and is done by the Allen County Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.
Juanita started out by showing the book form of PERSI which was the original way to use PERSI. Later on they put PERSI on a CD and that is where I first used it. PERSI is available from the library in their Searchable Databases under Heritage Quest, and can be searched either at the library or for Spokane City residents you can access those databases from your home computer using your library card number. Ancestry also has PERSI. PERSI is divided into four sections:
  • Surname
  • Locality
  • Methodology
  • Bibliography

Surname and Locality are self-explanatory; Methodology lets you search for articles on search methods. The last section is Bibliography and that lists all the periodicals in the Allen County library. It includes the EWGS Bulletin.

If you find an article you are interested in, Allen County Library has an order form for copies. They charge $7.50 plus 20 cents a page for the copies. That form is with the online database here. Be sure to check our own library for the periodical, since EWGS has a large collection of periodicals and the article you are looking for may be in that collection.

Dolly Webb brought an interlibrary loan form and said she had used it for items she had found in PERSI and using interlibrary loan is free. My suggestion is you can also send to whoever authored the periodical for a copy. I have received queries for copies of articles from the EWGS Bulletin that people found using PERSI.

The second part of Juanita's class was on NUCMC (pronounced "nuckmuck") or the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections, which was created by the Library of Congress in 1959 and contains records about materials in public, university and special libraries throughout the United States.

From 1959 to 1993, NUCMC was published in printed form. These books are in our genealogy collection at the library. The online version covers only records added after 1986 to the present.

To access it you need an internet connection, and then click here. It brings up a screen with three columns: clicking on "search OCLC catalog" brings up Questions on Searching; or Simple or Advanced search. Juanita suggested a simple search for Ohio Quakers, and it brought up several pages of hits. Clicking on one allows you to find out more detailed information on whatever you are interested in. I do not have any Ohio ancestors so I tried Massachusetts Quakers and several pages of hits came up. NUCMC is a real unused resource.

UPDATE: If you would like a copy of Juanita's syllabus, please e-mail Miriam Robbins Midkiff.

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